International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) |Volume VI, Issue XII, December 2022|ISSN 2454-6186

Multiple Choice Questions (MCQ) as Assessment Tool in Primary Schools: Perceived Influence on Students Writing Skills in Secondary Schools in Yaounde VI.

 Ndifor Roseline Fuhtung
University of Yaounde 1, Cameroon

Abstract: This study examines the influence of excess used MCQ as an assessment or test tool in senior primary schools on their writing competences in early secondary schools. The problem of this study emanates from the observed fall in writing skills among early primary school pupils in Yaounde V. Majority of the students who register in Form One do not know how to write well. The piloted and validated qualitative data analyses tool (interview guide) were used to collect data from 18 participants being 10 primary school class 5 and 6 teachers and 8 secondary school English teachers. The data was examined and the majority of the opinions sampled were considered and it indicated that: Junior secondary school students have unadorned writing challenges due to excess use of MCQ as assessment tools. They concede that it does not give the learner the ability to practice their own writing skills, thus, they turn to neglect it because it’s not much tested in the exams. We therefore recommend to the teachers that; they should employ a heterogeneous testing method in pupil’s exams.

Key Words: MCQ, Assessment tool, perceived influence, writing skills.

I. INTRODUCTION

In a school system, the teaching- learning process ends with an assessment. Assessment is a systematic procedure for measuring pupils’ progress or level of achievement against defined criteria to make a judgment about them. The goal of assessment in school is usually to support learning and to establish the competence of individual students in a particular lesson (Olayemi 2013). Assessment helps the person being assessed identify and respond to his own learning needs. According to Kabosso (2012), assessment in primary schools helps learners to meet certain standards. Moreover, the teacher uses the assessment data to identify strengths and weaknesses in student performance and to improve the quality of teaching and learning. Equally, assessment helps to assist student learning, to assess the effectiveness of a particular instructional strategy, to assess and improve the effectiveness of curriculum, to assess and improve teaching effectiveness and to provide data that assist in decision making, (Swearingen, 2002). There are several types of assessment among which we have; diagnostic assessment, formative assessment, summative assessment, impassive Assessment, norm-referenced assessment, and Criterion-Referenced Assessment (Vallikat, 2021). These different assessment strategies employ diverse